Rallying calls for unity were sounded at Middlesbrough Town Hall after the council agreed to seek £15m in exceptional financial support.

At a meeting of the full council at Middlesbrough Town Hall, members were told the authority stood ‘on a knife’s edge’. Applying for emergency financial support was “a necessary step”, said town’s mayor, and the only alternative was issuing a section 114 notice, which effectively declares a council bankrupt.

“Ultimately a section 114 would just mean that commissioners come in, charge us for that process and then apply for exceptional financial support anyway,” said Mayor, Chris Cooke. “With that we lose all the autonomy, we lose services and we ultimately lose more jobs.”

“We stand at a very, very close knife edge and I’m not going to make any attempt to try and say that this isn’t going to be very risky over the coming months,” he said. With support of councillors he said they can build and implement the plans.

He told the council chamber they need to focus on the plan going forwards, recover the council’s financial position and reset its priorities. The goal was to protect services that matter most, “not only in a financial sense but in a moral sense” he said, highlighting proposed expansions of homelessness support and in-house children’s provision.

Darlington and Stockton Times: Mayor Chris Cooke and Cllr Matt Storey urged members at the town hall to work together

At an earlier meeting of the Executive, members heard the £15m exceptional financial support would be used to plug a gap of at least £6.3m in the budget for 2024/25 as well funding redundancies in the early part of this year. It could also be put towards delivery of a programme of change aimed at transforming services at the troubled local authority, as well as replenishing its dwindling reserves.

Middlesbrough Independent Improvement Advisory Board, which was appointed to oversee the council’s moves to address financial, cultural and governance issues, said positive work was being made but attention was still required in some areas. Noting this, Cllr Matt Storey: “One of the things they said, which I thought was really important, is that we can’t deliver the change that Middlesbrough needs – the financial change, the cultural change – unless it’s the whole council doing it.”

In terms of the financial support bid he said they needed to put aside political differences to ensure continuation of services for people in Middlesbrough.. “If we are going to make that a reality we have to do it together,” he said.

“I think what we all need to do now is have an acceptance that we are in a difficult position. We’re on a knife edge as the Mayor says.

“What I really want to say tonight is a call for unity as a council. This town needs a functioning council and we need to make that work.”

In light of the £15m figure agreed by the Executive, Simon Clarke, Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, said “enough is enough”. He repeated calls for immediate Government intervention in the running of the local authority, saying its situation was “untenable”.

During the Full Council meeting, Cllr Storey said commissioner intervention “would be a mistake” incredibly damaging to Middlesbrough Council in lots of different ways.” Blame has been thrown around for the council’s financial woes with Mr Cooke attributing them to decisions being taken by the previous administration, led by former Mayor Andy Preston.

Cllr Nicky Walker, Executive member for finance and governance, said they took on a council where expenditure exceeded income. Independent councillors, meanwhile, have insisted the council inherited a balanced budget.

Speaking after the Executive meeting on Wednesday, Longlands and Beechwood councillor Joan McTigue said: “The last budget was presented by Andy Preston and his team and it was a balanced budget. In only ten months of Labour councillors being in charge of the council, we have gone from that (a balanced budget) to where we are now – having to go cap in hand asking to borrow £15m.”